"In ten years Perl will have this and that and for that we have to break compatibility in a few places. Only as necessary of course!"

Here's what he actually said in his speech announcing the current P6 project in 2000:

"It is our belief that if Perl culture is designed right, Perl will be able to evolve into the language we need 20 years from now. It’s also our belief that only a radical rethinking of both the Perl language and its implementation can energize the community in the long run."

He also actually said:

Now, this is not going to happen quickly. We expect to have alpha code a year from now, or some definition of alpha. We might even ship it, but we expect it to be well-designed alpha code.

... and:

Basically what we are saying at this point is if we are going to bite the bullet and require translation of Perl 5 to Perl 6, that really means that we can consider anything that still allows us to translate most scripts. Now we do not expect to be able to translate a 100 percent, but if we can translate with 95-percent accuracy 95 percent of the scripts, and 100-percent accuracy 80 percent of the scripts, then that’s getting into the ballpark....

Larry said these words within hours of the conception of Perl 6.

Like much of what Larry has said over the years about his thinking about the long term big picture, the stuff I quoted has always made sense to me.

In contrast his talk of an alpha was essentially him relaying an estimate from the core group, a group that had already decided they wanted Larry to stay out of project management or implementation.

The plan allotted him just 4 weeks to go from initial design concept to finished specification once the RFCs were in. Then, instead of the anticipated couple dozen RFCs, a few hundred of them rolled in.

By mid September 2000 anyone paying attention should have known that the estimate from the group for an alpha (which Larry had simply relayed on that first day) was going to be years off.

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The translation narrative still makes sense to me. I also see Inline::Perl5 as an appropriate solution in many scenarios.

So we expected some definition of alpha in a year, did we get it? Or did the feature creep only just started to gain speed a year after the announcement with the specs getting (some definition of) finished only several years later?

Jenda
Enoch was right!
Enjoy the last years of Rome.

Either the Perl culture was not designed right or that belief was wrong then.

And there was more than this speech back then. While it was clear from the start that total compatibility was not a goal, the resulting hodgepodge of ad hoc changes is not what was promised back then.

Jenda
Enoch was right!
Enjoy the last years of Rome.

Either the Perl culture was not designed right or that belief was wrong then.

Or your analysis is wrong.

From my perspective the haters were winning the war in 1999/2000 but now the war is essentially over, haters have limited impact in the Perl community, and Perl is set to evolve nicely over the next decade.

And there was more than this speech back then. While it was clear from the start that total compatibility was not a goal, the resulting hodgepodge of ad hoc changes is not what was promised back then.

You have misunderstood the scope of change that was talked about at the start for Perl 6; the coherent design that has emerged; and the way the latter is indeed consistent with what was promised back then.

The whole point was that Perl 6 needed to be a radical break if Perl was to remain attractive to ultra creative thinkers like Damian Conway and hundreds like him:

• "everything is negotiable"
• "parts of Perl 5 go in the washing machine ... parts go in the bathtub"
• "It's the mindless sniping that is destructive"

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Anyway, this thread should be about the bright future of Perl 5 and I'm going to switch my focus to that.

I reject the thesis that Ovid's discussion of improving Perl 5 is old hat, uninteresting, and doomed to failure. I accept that it took uncomfortably long to get to where we are for Perl 5 as well as Perl 6 but I don't buy that it's worthwhile debating whether it could or should have been done any other way and I don't buy that the thing to do right now is to pour cold water on good ideas like the ones Ovid suggested.